Friday, December 30, 2011

This months sensory bin is all about monkeys and inspired by 5 little monkeys sitting in a tree book. See below for details. Inside the bin: Corn kernels, monkeys, alphabet pasta, bananas and vintage palm trees. Oh and some plastic tweezers for picking out letters and a plastic formula scoop.

Now as for the book:

This is a very engaging book for toddlers and preschoolers due to the repetitive verses and sing song sentences. We love all of the 5 little monkey book series. I think we own just about all of them:)Thanks for looking and Please See My Sidebar For All the Great Blogs I Link Up To:)

Monday, December 19, 2011

Hi everyone. I'm doing a bit of planning for baby boys room. I plan to design his room so he can grow with it. Thank god for Pinterest as I found a ton of ideas. also Etsy was a huge help as well, but let's face it I'm not made of money especially since my maternity leave is coming up. so I have to do this carefully and on the cheap! First I wanted to search things to make from wood pallets as we have access to tons if them. You will see a few pics below of some really cool ideas.

I am so in love with the above picture. Everything about it screams my name as it is so my style. The bedding, the headboard, the vinyl decal. Oh boy so in love !I love the idea of this decal on a pallet headboard in red. I guess I should mention that baby boy's room will go from a owl outdoor theme to a rustic roughing it camping theme

I would like to incorporate some canoe paddles too And beware of bears while camping is a good idea too. I had to ask my dad if he could find this sign in Alberta because they have bear problems and we don't here in N.S. so we can't buy them at our local store. Of course I could buy one off Etsy or Ebay but they want way too much for them. So fingers crossed my dad can find one. More paddles. I just love the colors! I love this little saying And how clever is this? A wagon full of books! Another headboard So in this pic I love the bedding, side table and that beautiful aqua wall shelf And yes more paddles. I have to admit my hubby finished the headboard today and he gave me a lot of grief over the toxic chemicles wood pallets have sprayed all over them. I mean yes he has a good point we don't want to make our boy sick! so the good hubby that he is he sanded and sanded until he hit bare wood. Now in theory you would think it would look really rustic, right? wrong! it just looked like pine with nail holes in it. So I found a can of stain forgotten in the back of the closet and used a rag to apply it. It looks really cool and it's safe for the boy to sleep in as #1 hubby sanded all the treated parts away and #2 the stain would seal in any bit that were missed.

Anywhoooooo pics to come after I find all the coordinating bits. I have a comforter ordered and it's nothing like the ones posted but it will work with his pale green walls.

Pouring presents. The kids decided to change some of these trays by exchanging some of the items with others. It was pretty cool to watch how they manipulated each tray and came up with new ways to explore each. My camera is still in getting fixed so I didn't get a lot of pics of our trays but you can see last years trays here

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Good question. I'm working on it but they will be pretty much the same from last year. You can see last December's trays here. We are busy baking for our Christmas party on the 16th and making crafts, exploring our sensory bin and dancing to Christmas music. I will post tomorrow about our baking activities

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Our 12 days of Christmas Advent calendar for this year. Jada also has a book advent and a chocolate advent so I thought 12 days for this one was more than enough.

I followed the tutorial for this from Whimsy Love (link at bottom of post) I sent my poor hubby all over town looking for the coin prize vending machines. We finally found one at Walmart. I did order more from Ebay and Etsy so I can make some for my niece. These kind of remind me of fishing bobbies lol

Inside each one is a sticker, small chocolate or piece of paper that has an activity on it such as, go for a walk to see some Christmas lights, paint a winter picture, read some Christmas books etc

I tried to make my snowmen a bit different so I used crinkle cut scissors to cut the felt nose and gave them some rosie cheeks. And I used fabric paint for the eyes and mouth for a 3D effect

I totally borrowed this idea from Whimsy Love. I first saw it pinned on Pinterest and followed the link to her blog where I fell in love with her super cute and genius idea of a vending machine capsule snowman advent calendar. This is her adorable advent garland: Thanks so much Whimsy Love for the best Advent idea ever! My little girl is so excited for December 12th:)

The great North sensory bin. I actually decided to do this theme a while ago but I recently googled sensory bins and low and be hold I found one! It looks almost the exact same as mine! crazy right! Click HERE to see the one I found while googling

Inside the bin:Salt (A first for us), sparkles, plastic trees, plastic Arctic animals, igloo and people. Will be back soon to post our playdough. We took a long break from playdough so it should be lotys of fun making new stuff.Thanks for looking and please see my sidebar for all the great blogs I link up to:)